Showing posts with label math. Show all posts
Showing posts with label math. Show all posts

Tuesday, 28 March 2017

My Last 10

Doug Peterson shared a challenge from Alec Couros - If you were summed up by your last 10 Tweets or Facebook posts, what would that look like?   I've decided to just use my last 10 Tweets; I tend to use Twitter for professional purposes and Facebook for personal/education.

My last 10 Tweets:










So what do these last 10 Tweets say about me?
I follow a lot of smart people from a lot of different places, some of whom I know 'in the real world' and some of whom I've never met. I love that about social media; being able to learn from so many different people in different contexts.

Two of the posts are about A Day In The Life, an upcoming event at my former board that was part of my portfolio as a consultant. Even though I am retired, I am still like to promote important things happening at 'my board.'

Many of the posts are about kindergarten and early primary grades. My educational background is Early Years, my first teaching job was as a kindergarten teacher and my final assignment was Kindergarten Consultant. I have a passion for early years, even in retirement.

Two posts on leadership reflect my current learning as an EdD student in Educational Leadership at Western. It's a great program, challenging in so many ways, but fantastic learning.

And lastly, my most recent tweet is about some self-regulation courses coming up in Toronto. I started the self-reg courses in the fall for a number of reasons but mostly because self-reg was emerging as a key part of my doctoral Problem of Practice. What I didn't anticipate was how much learning more about self-regulation would help me in my own day to day life.

What about you? What do your Tweets, Facebook and Instagram posts say about you?
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Wednesday, 14 December 2016

Standing Desks and Other Classroom Micro-environments

I stumbled across these Standing Desk Hacks while wandering on Twitter the other day (be sure to scroll down once you open the link to see all of them).  I immediately made a connection to the self-regulation idea of micro-environments, or creating small spaces within the large spaces of our indoor and outdoor learning classrooms where students can go to up regulate or down regulate.

But as I went back and looked again at the Twitter images, I realized that none of them seemed to involve children or to be situated in an elementary school context.  I wonder how often we discourage children from creating these standing desks or other micro-environments even though their behaviour is clearly communicating to us that the current environment is a stressor for them.  As students burn energy trying to stay seated, they have less energy for learning.

Last week I was in a grade three classroom, working with a group of 6 students as they learned a new math game called Blokus  (It is a fun spatial awareness strategy game.  If you haven't played it yet, you should try it. It is so much fun! ) Each student had a partner and they had a colour of tile, and then I had the yellow tiles on my own. While we were playing some students were seated, some were standing, and all were able to learn.  If I had been worried about making sure everyone was sitting down, some of them wouldn't have been able to focus on the math and that's what was really important.  And really, how awesome is it that they are so excited about a math game that they can't sit still!!!!


Playing Blokus - some students standing, some sitting, everyone engaged!
Photo by Sherry Doherty (Twitter @sherrysws)


Having said that, one student was still having difficulty even while he was standing - he was banging his metal water bottle, he was singing, he was bumping into the desks. After a few attempts at redirection, I finally had to say to him, "Adam*, you need to go sit on the carpet for a couple of minutes until you can join us at the game without distracting me so much."  He went to the carpet and sat quietly while we continued to play, then after a minute announced, "I'm ready to come back."
(*name changed)

"OK Adam, but this game requires us to concentrate.  You have to make sure you're not too distracting."

He stood through the game for the whole period, and he still needed to move around a lot, but he was able to do it in a way that wasn't bumping the desks and threatening to send the game board to the floor and he wasn't disturbing the students who needed a quieter environment to concentrate and strategize.

Ideally, I wish I had taken more time to talk through the steps of self-reg with Adam and to debrief with him afterwards about his strategies that the used; that will be my goal for next time.  But, for now, I was able to recognize the behaviour as stress behaviour not misbehaviour and he was able to find strategies to successfully be part of the group.  I'll count that as a success.

From www.self-reg.ca



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Tuesday, 21 June 2016

Next steps

When writing report cards for students, we conclude each subject area with 'next steps.'  The Ministry of Education in Ontario has recently released Growing Success: The Kindergarten Addendum which addresses Assessment, Evaluation and Reporting and it states that  Next Steps in Learning refers to ways in which the child can move forward in developing knowledge and skills, in relation to the overall expectations, both at school and at home. Developmental stage, learning trajectory, and/or other individual processes of learning should be taken into account when determining next steps in learning.

 Since we believe that as educators we need to think about next steps for learning for students, I think we also need to think about our own next steps. At different times in my career, I have had to reflect and determine my next stage and learning trajectory.  Staying at the same school in the same grade assignment doesn't fit my restless nature.  I've been fortunate to teach a range of assignments in a range of settings - from open concept school to a classroom in a portable out by the parking lot.  I've taught in urban, suburban and county schools; in small schools with barely 200 students to large schools with over 800 students.  I've had my own homeroom classroom, taught 'rotary' when I was the primary literacy teacher for 14 primary classrooms, and then moved on to work at the board level.   I worked as an instructional coach for primary math and primary literacy - travelling from school to school supporting teachers and administrators with implementing balanced literacy, small group instruction and hands on mathematics. 


Taking a group of educators to Fighting Island for Outdoor Education 
Facilitating conversations during in-school collaborative inquiry

After school math workshop - doing the math!


 At the end of this month, I will be retiring and moving on to my 'next step.'  Only 7 more work days and then I will be moving forward to new learning and a new stage.  I am only one year in to my studies at UWestern on my Educational Doctorate, so there will be that new learning and I intend to continue to teach online for Queens.  I wonder what other new learning will be part of this next stage?  
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